[HN Gopher] New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals ...
___________________________________________________________________
New U.S. immigration rules spur more visa approvals for STEM
workers
Author : Metacelsus
Score : 196 points
Date : 2023-12-28 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| fnord77 wrote:
| would love to see the breakdown by STEM field.
|
| I'm guessing most are going toward computer programming/support
| roles, but I could be wrong
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Having worked in STEM fields other than IT, I can assure you it
| is not the only one affected here.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > it is not the only one affected here.
|
| Thats why parent comment said most.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| Yep, s_em employment is dominated by US defense.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> "You don't have any accomplishments," the lawyer told him.
| "You don't have a patent, or even a product." That scolding
| spurred Sanjay to make a list of what he needed to do to achieve
| his goal of staying permanently. He improved the technology his
| AI-based firm was developing, expanded its customer base, and
| filed for a U.S. patent, which was awarded earlier this year. In
| May those efforts paid off, allowing him to move from an O-1A to
| a EB-1 visa, which grants him permanent residency. _
|
| Question from non-USA-an here. I wonder if this will lead people
| to spam the patent office with low quality inventions hoping
| something will stick and help them secure a EB-1 visa.
| satya71 wrote:
| Not any more than other patent applicants. Currently all the
| layers in patent application process is incentivized to ignore
| quality.
|
| 1. Large companies pay a bonus for every patent applied and
| bigger one for approval.
|
| 2. Patent lawyers are paid for filed patents.
|
| 3. Patent office makes money on each patent. They view the
| review process as a cost center and optimize it for fast
| approval.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Outsourcing real approval to the courts, what could possibly
| go wrong?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Would be fine if courts were sufficiently funded such that
| adjudication happened within weeks.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Currently all the layers in patent application process is
| incentivized to ignore quality._
|
| Not just "incentivized to ignore quality", they aren't duty-
| bound to consider quality at all. The PTO evaluates
| applications for novelty, not quality.
|
| The three main relevant parts of the US Code are:
|
| 35 USC Sec. 101: is it patentable? (i.e., it must be a
| process, machine, process, or manufactured good. It can't be
| something like an idea or song)
|
| 35 USC Sec. 102: is it novel? (i.e., no one single prior
| existing item teaches all the limitations of the patent
| claims)
|
| 35 USC Sec. 103: is it non-obvious? (i.e., you can't combine
| a couple of different patents to arrive at your patent)
|
| There's a few other important sections (like 112 that ensures
| you're giving enough detail), but none of them look at
| "quality". In other words, you can patent a worthless
| invention as long as it passes those wickets.
|
| Edit: Somewhat surprisingly to some, they don't necessarily
| evaluate infringement either. So you could, in theory, have a
| novel patent that you can't use to make something because it
| infringes on an existing patent.
| pc86 wrote:
| They're barely qualified to address novelty and get it
| wrong often, so I can't even imagine the types of things
| that would have been denied had they tried to evaluate the
| quality as well.
| samstave wrote:
| >> _The PTO evaluates applications for novelty, not
| quality._
|
| As it should be.
|
| The USPTO is in no place to evaluate a patent's quality,
| unless youre a USPTO clerk whos first name starts with
| Albert and your last name ends in -Stein.
|
| ---
|
| But in seriousness, novelty is the important factor in a
| patent, not quality. As utility patents/improvement patents
| are a thing.
| lesuorac wrote:
| I would disagree and claim the patent office is
| "incentivized to ignore quality".
|
| The clerks are expected to do a certain amount of work per
| week and granting a patent counts as more work than denying
| a patent.
| abduhl wrote:
| Patent examiners are rated on office ACTIONS. Grants and
| denies both count as actions, although denials often take
| more effort (and complaints from the potential patentee).
| lesuorac wrote:
| I mean they're not rated on ACTIONS. They're rated on
| their PRODUCTION UNITS; of which an ALLOWANCE yields
| twice as many PRODUCTION UNITS than a REJECTION yields.
|
| So; clerk are incentivized to grant a patent as it takes
| less effort and yields more production units. If a patent
| is of poor quality and later is invalidated in a lawsuit;
| the clerk will not lose production units. Therefore; the
| clerk is incentivized to grant patents as they count as
| more production units and not penalized for granting a
| patent they shouldn't've.
|
| https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/Examination%20T
| ime...
| abduhl wrote:
| This is a misunderstanding of the slideshow. As can be
| seen on slide 10, productivity is "Number of office
| actions / period of time" and slide 12 shows the
| breakdown of how production units are calculated from
| office actions. A final disposition (allowance, appeal,
| or abandonment) is worth twice as much as a final
| rejection; however, that does not mean an examiner is
| incentivized to allow patents. Rather, they are
| incentivized to get to the end of the process by either
| allowing the patent, having the patentee appeal the
| examiner's final rejection, or by the patentee abandoning
| their application. Which of these three occurs is
| irrelevant to the examiner, although as I said before: an
| allowance take the least amount of effort.
|
| In fact, the most production units that can be obtained
| by a patent examiner for any particular patent is to
| issue a final rejection, get the patentee to ask for re-
| examination, reject again, and then have the patentee
| abandon the patent.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| > Currently all the layers in patent application process is
| incentivized to ignore quality.
|
| Hasn't it always been the case? There's a ton of old patents
| for shit which can't work as described.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| How do you define "fast approval"?
| samstave wrote:
| yes
| samstave wrote:
| > _1. Large companies pay a bonus for every patent applied
| and bigger one for approval._
|
| When at lockheed we had what I referred to as the _" Croatian
| Coalition"_ a bunch of Croatian engineers that were all over
| all the patents we were filing (RFID for weapons) -- they
| were all so proud of all their patents (as they should be) -
| but they were really aggressive on filing for not just the
| satisfaction (getting a patent must be a great feeling, I am
| not yet personally on any even though I have influenced
| several)
|
| But they like the bonuses and internal recognition that came
| with them.
|
| Also, spamming the patent office would be hard unless you
| have deep pockets/are a patent attorney or have Big Corp
| funding your efforts (and rewarding them)
|
| I am sure there are cheap ways to file, but for the average
| person, not so much.
| swagempire wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are getting at here. The lawyer's job
| is not to judge the quality of a patent -- in the same way a
| defense lawyer is not there to judge the innocence of their
| client.
|
| The patent lawyer is just there to file the patent and help
| their client get past the approval process.
|
| It is the PATENT OFFICE who's job it is to judge quality.
|
| Have several patents, btw.
| meltyness wrote:
| replicability is unenforceable
| KMag wrote:
| 0. Large companies much prefer to settle patent disputes with
| "Okay, you might have a case for patents A, B, C. We have a
| case for you infringing on our patents D and E. We like your
| patents F and G. What do you like from our portfolio? Okay,
| and we'll throw in these 300 random patents to show we're
| willing to reduce our ability to drown your lawyers in
| paperwork. How about you throw in 200 random patents to bring
| down the size of your paperwork arsenal? Do we have a deal?"
|
| Edit: so at some point in the patent portfolio cross-
| licensing negotiation, there's a pure numbers game, so for
| large corporations there is some value in patents nobody is
| ever going to implement.
|
| At least that's my recollection from 15 years ago about why
| Google paid me as sole inventor of a patent. (I was working
| on indexing, and thought "Oh no, if someone does X, then
| indexing becomes incredibly harder, basically DRM for the
| web. Webspam could hide more easily. Oh, but if we patent X,
| that might make my life easier in the future." The patent
| lawyer zeroed in too much on my mention of CAPTCHA as a
| possible use case, so I'm not sure if Google could really use
| my patent to prevent its use as DRM/Webspam hiding. At some
| point, I decided pushing back against the lawyer to make the
| patent more broadly applicable might not be good for society.
| I didn't feel strongly enough to turn down my patent bonus,
| just strongly enough to stop pushing edits back to the
| lawyer.)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| really, how much do large companies pay per patent? any data
| points?
| lgleason wrote:
| Someone mentioned Lockheed, at GE they had a program that
| was pushed really hard on software engineers/EE's etc. with
| a carrot of a bonus for patents accepted and approved.
| satya71 wrote:
| I've seen about $5k in the past. But I haven't worked at a
| large company for a while.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I know this is a little controversial, but I wish our
| software development culture would discourage patents as
| taboo, something to _not_ be proud of. Software patents are a
| truly terrible arms race, and they essentially aren 't
| protecting anyone except the big boys.
|
| "Having N patents" should be something that gets frowned on,
| not something you highlight on your resume. When asked about
| this myself (during interviews or whatever), I proudly boast
| that I have zero patents to my name and that I actively avoid
| being part of the problem by participating. I see it as an
| opportunity to 1. help steer our culture in whatever tiny way
| I can and 2. get up on a little soap box about the problem.
|
| In the past, I've been asked to help out with patent
| applications for these so-called "inventions" that I
| developed, and I always tell my manager "If you want to
| patent this, I can't stop you, but do not put my name on it
| or associate it with me in any way."
| bdowling wrote:
| > "... do not put my name on it or associate it with me in
| any way."
|
| If you invented it, then they have to put your name on the
| application as the inventor. There's also a declaration
| that the inventor is supposed to sign as part of the
| application. If the inventor is dead or otherwise
| unavailable (e.g., refuses to sign), there's an alternative
| form that can be filed.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet lots of companies play fast and
| loose with the "inventor" names on patents anyway. I've
| looked up software patents issued to companies I've
| worked for, and sometimes the "inventors" listed were
| just eng managers and likely had nothing to do with the
| actual grunt work of writing the code.
| alibarber wrote:
| "the actual grunt work of writing the code" isn't
| actually patentable in my experience, from Europe (inc.
| UK).
|
| The inventive step is the actual decision of 'we will do
| this thing in this way', or rather determining the
| 'method'. In fact, the guidelines we follow are that
| someone implementing the design based on some
| instructions, i.e, just working on a ticket, is
| explicitly not to be included as an inventor - unless
| they actually decided that's how it should be done.
|
| Of course, it's nice to work in a place whereby you get
| to design and implement the system and become an
| inventor. In my opinion and experience at least. But I
| can see some organisations whereby developers are popping
| off tickets in sprints and implementing them - but that
| is by definition not an inventive step.
| lgleason wrote:
| They just created a giant loophole that will be easy to game.
| Patents are easy to get and someone will come up with a startup
| mill that will be nothing but a visa factory.
| abduhl wrote:
| >> Patents are easy to get
|
| How many do you have? Patents are more difficult to obtain
| than HN gives credit and they cost a non-inconsequential
| amount of money too.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| > How many do you have?
|
| That seems like an odd retort to me. Like I have zero
| because I find the whole idea ethically dubious. When I was
| at IBM, they had occasional patent brainstorming meetings.
| I remember saying to one of the more senior engineers that
| everything I worked on was straightforward/obvious, and he
| told me I'd be surprised, which didn't do much to sway my
| thoughts on the ethics there.
|
| Everyone who had been there for a few years had a couple
| patents. I don't remember any of them now, which I guess is
| sort of the point: it was all basic stuff that would be
| very difficult to honestly characterize as an "invention".
| abduhl wrote:
| How is it an odd retort? If you haven't obtained a patent
| then the likelihood that you've actually gone through the
| patent procurement process with the USPTO is extremely
| low on this website. It's hackernews, not
| patentexaminernews or patentagentnews after all.
|
| It would be like me saying "designing your own operating
| system is easy" and having someone respond "how many OSes
| have you designed?"
|
| And by the way, your own story bears out the same:
| despite working for IBM (a company where attorneys
| familiar with the patent process are no doubt legion),
| participating or being aware of these patent brainstorm
| sessions, and stating that everyone had one after a
| couple years, you have zero. So what would you know about
| the patent prosecution process? Certainly not enough to
| say that it's easy.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Perhaps it comes down to an interpretation about what's
| "easy".
|
| Evidently, based on patents being issued, it is easy to
| get a patent in the sense that you don't need a novel or
| nontrivial invention to do so. You don't need to go
| through the process to observe the results.
|
| Perhaps there is a lot of paperwork, and in that sense
| it's not "easy". Or perhaps it is not "easy" to convince
| the patent office to accept trivial patents or patents on
| nonpatentable subject matter like math, but the volume of
| these things suggests that it can't be that hard.
|
| If you knew millions of high school students write an OS
| as a project each year, you could safely conclude it's
| not that hard, even if you haven't done it.
| guitarbill wrote:
| Not only is this unnecessarily hostile, but also easily
| refuted. Here's the process for software patents, which
| by the way some countries do not grant because it's such
| bullshit. Software "ideas" get written up and then
| transformed by a lawyer into incomprehensible legalese.
| Often to the point the "inventor" cannot understand them
| anymore. Sometimes, managers get added as "inventors".
| Then, the patent is submitted and iterated on until it
| gets accepted.
|
| So the hard part is having enough money to pay a lawyer.
| And being morally opposed to patents, especially software
| patents, is a valid position.
| abduhl wrote:
| Your refutation is the equivalent of:
|
| Step 1 - Come up with a software idea and give it to a
| lawyer (let's not even get into how hard this step might
| be)
|
| Step 2 - ???
|
| Step 3 - Patent
|
| There was nothing hostile in my reply. I just laid out
| the exact facts that GP put in their post in order to
| support the opposite conclusion that GP was pushing.
| gourabmi wrote:
| Sorry. This does not seem like an odd retort to me. Just
| because you are opposed to the general idea does not make
| it easy :)
|
| From your comments, it seems like you have little
| exposure to the actual time and effort spent in the
| patent process. And that is okay!
| trgn wrote:
| Yeah, some larger organization have a good admin and legal
| support structure around it, so it feels frictionless to
| the applicant. But it is a total slog, and can take years
| to materialize.
| bumby wrote:
| Eh, they aren't that difficult to get, especially if you
| have an attorney to help with the legalese. To your point,
| if you have a couple grand and an even mediocre idea, you
| can patent it. Technically, you can do it yourself but I
| suspect navigating the patent minefield is what makes it
| seem hard, not necessarily having a great new product.
|
| Source: I've done it just to see what the system is like.
| dougmwne wrote:
| The patent office is always spammed with low quality
| "inventions". The US patent system is in pretty desperate need
| of reform. The conversation with a few extra crappy patents is
| basically zero.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Reply from non-USA who has worked in USA. Many companies
| already spam the patent office with low-quality/non-existent
| inventions. One put a quota on us for number of submissions, so
| that led to at least 200 a year from one firm knowing full well
| the vast majority would go nowhere. Another would file at least
| one with every product and delay the evaluation as long as
| possible to game the system so they could write "patent
| pending" and attach the veneer of innovation on the marketing
| material
| dmoy wrote:
| > so they could write "patent pending" and attach the veneer
| of innovation on the marketing material
|
| There's another reason too:
|
| Having a large number of patents for a given subject matter
| makes it a veritable arsenal for use against other companies,
| either offensively or defensively (since a common defense to
| a lawsuit of patent infringement is a countersuit with your
| own parent infringement lawsuit). Gotta feed the dancing
| gorilla
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| As a US citizen interested in improving the visa process who
| regularly interfaces with policymakers, propose an objective
| rubric that is better and I will get it in front of
| policymakers. Can't guarantee an outcome, will guarantee the
| effort. Patent quota is bullshit, but also "I know talent when
| I see it" (even though I do and how I hire) isn't going to fly.
| Sorting hats are hard, Goodhart's Law, etc. High level, you are
| attempting to build a system to encourage the best and
| brightest to come work (and hopefully make it home) in the US
| while defending against those who will attempt to find system
| weakness to exploit.
|
| EDIT: I won't pollute the thread with thank yous for replies,
| but they are appreciated.
|
| (thoughts and opinions always my own)
| cogman10 wrote:
| Degree from a recognized school. Verified work history in the
| field.
|
| Those wouldn't be perfect metrics, and they might be easy to
| fudge. So it then becomes a question of if disqualification
| of the capable is worse than qualification of the incapable.
|
| I personally prefer to let more people in than less. It's not
| like it's smooth sailing in the US if you can't do skilled
| work.
| estebank wrote:
| Degree and work history are already a significant part of
| evaluation on L1/L2 and H1B visas.
|
| IIRC 3 years of work experience are considered equivalent
| to 1 year of college education, which allows those who
| didn't get a degree but have extensive experience to also
| have an avenue for obtaining a Visa.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| It's a ridiculous system to value 12 years of experience
| in the movie industry as on par with a film degree. The
| software industry makes it even more absurd since
| historically the very top talent has often skipped
| college _and_ become world class in their early 20s.
| xtreme wrote:
| You don't have to look far, Canada has already implemented a
| point based system for granting permanent residence to
| skilled workers. It assigns scores to applicants based on
| education, skills, employment offer, language speaking
| ability, etc. I believe it can be a good starting point for a
| more objective selection criteria than the current system
| which is more based on luck.
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-
| citizenship/se...
| abduhl wrote:
| Trump attempted to implement a points based system and was
| met with fierce resistance:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/05/17/key-
| facts...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/08/06/h-1b
| -...
| stackskipton wrote:
| Yea, companies using H-1B to hire cheap workers fought
| the changes hard.
| rajup wrote:
| Nah democrats fought it hard because it would "reduce
| diversity".
| sunshowers wrote:
| The utility of a point system is that it makes the
| criteria legible--the problem wasn't the fact that it was
| a points system, the problem was in the details of the
| system.
|
| The second link you posted lists a large number of anti-
| immigrant ideas that Trump had. That was the general
| tenor of his administration as I personally experienced
| it: rhetoric about unauthorized immigration, actions
| against legal immigrants.
|
| (I used to be on an H1B and got my green card last year.)
| abduhl wrote:
| This is a strange comment to read since, as far as I
| recall, the only details that were ever really shared
| before the overall plan was killed due to its political
| backlash are that it would be merits-based considering
| age, ability to speak English, job offers, and
| educational background and that it would shift the number
| of green cards away from being primarily awarded based on
| family ties to this new merit system. Democrats rejected
| even discussing the proposal out of hand. Some quotes
| from https://apple.news/ABYsQ0lE-RFWj_S5pwuFq5w :
|
| On the other side of the aisle, House Speaker Nancy
| Pelosi (D-Calif.) called Trump's offering a "dead-on-
| arrival plan that is not a remotely serious proposal."
| And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) slammed it as a
| "despicable abdication of moral authority" that would
| have kept Blumenthal's own immigrant father from entering
| the United States.
|
| ...
|
| Democrats on Thursday also took issue with the White
| House's characterization of the kind of immigrants who
| bring "merit" to the United States.
|
| "It is really a condescending word," Pelosi said at her
| weekly news conference on Thursday morning. "Are they
| saying family is without merit?"
| binarymax wrote:
| Same for the UK, the tier-1 visa, which is how I got my
| first independent visa there. Unfortunately it also gives
| high points for income, which biases for privileged peoples
| and origin countries. But if you can get to the UK on a
| work permit with a high salary for a couple years, then you
| can apply it as points when you eventually apply.
|
| EDIT: just checked and it's obsolete. Not sure if there is
| a post-Brexit equivalent.
| https://www.gov.uk/tier-1-investor
| klipt wrote:
| Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because
| they qualify for permanent residence on points but then
| can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work
| experience"?
|
| Canada also has a major housing crisis due to not building
| enough housing for population growth (which is entirely
| immigration, Canada's population would shrink without it).
|
| Doesn't seem their system works very well in practice. At
| least the U.S. employer based green card system mostly
| guarantees that employment green card recipients already
| have jobs.
| ink_13 wrote:
| > Isn't Canada full of foreign PhDs driving taxis because
| they qualify for permanent residence on points but then
| can't get jobs because employers want "Canadian work
| experience"?
|
| Canadian here. Nope.
| bluedevilzn wrote:
| Also Canadian here. PhD might be a stretch but there's
| absolutely a large number of Uber drivers with a foreign
| masters.
| Detrytus wrote:
| And that makes sense, since in some countries Master's
| degrees are dime a dozen. PhD still means something
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| "Canadian work experience" is a generic reason often
| given to people who the company doesn't want to hire. It
| has happened to people I know. There can be many reasons:
|
| - Racial bias
|
| - Sexual bias
|
| - Age bias
|
| - Candidate's English / French ability.
|
| - Candidate's actual experience isn't relevant enough.
|
| - Candidate's personality.
|
| - Candidate's appearance.
|
| - Candidate's communication skills.
|
| Why would I give you the real reason when I can provide a
| generic reason and stay out of trouble?
|
| Some people I know went to college to get local
| credentials. Luckily community college is affordable and
| respected. Others changed fields. Others started their
| first business. A few left the country.
| apwell23 wrote:
| Why do you have to give any reason at all. I never got
| any reason in USA 90% of the time.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| I was going to say something similar. I don't believe in
| points any more. It just reproduces the class prejudices
| of overeducated people. The US has an abundance of
| "highly skilled" FAANG workers. It has a shortage of
| construction workers, plumbers, and electricians. The one
| "high skill" (really _high class_ ) industry where I'd
| make an exception is medicine, because there are
| shortages there.
|
| But FAANG stuff? No, these are the companies that just
| had layoffs.
|
| And we can see exactly how this has played out in Canada.
| Too many upper class professionals gouging each other's
| eyes out for $1M starter homes, and not enough people
| with real physical skills, like building them.
| toyg wrote:
| One can just adjust the points towards what you need,
| like Australia does. Me and then-wife applied about 15
| years ago - she studied at the American school in Milan,
| graduated in the UK, and got a master and PhD in
| computational chemistry. I'd been living in the UK for a
| decade, working in IT. They said thanks but no thanks,
| Melbourne doesn't need you - whereas tradesmen, plumbers,
| miners etc have no problem whatsoever moving there, year
| after year.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > Canada also has a major housing crisis due to not
| building enough housing for population growth (which is
| entirely immigration, Canada's population would shrink
| without it).
|
| I am not sure if this logic is accurate. There can be
| housing shortage if people move to certain part of the
| country internally too. USA has 'housing crisis' but
| houses are plenty and cheap in peoria IL.
| vsskanth wrote:
| I guess the rubric depends on whether policymakers view the
| employment based green card system as zero-sum or non-zero-
| sum.
|
| My proposal for green cards:
|
| zero-sum - points based system based on your current salary,
| taxes paid and the occupation shortage list OR straight up
| auction
|
| non-zero-sum - let people apply for a green card as long as
| they've stayed in the country for X years without any
| criminal infractions, have earned above N*min-wage for all
| those years.
|
| If you're asking about work visas, probably just ranking by
| location-adjusted-salary and handing them out should do the
| job.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Who creates the occupation shortage list and how is it
| protected from companies who want their jobs included on it
| to drive down wages and suppress workers' rights?
| vsskanth wrote:
| DOL does it. It's called the Schedule A Occupation List.
|
| The problem is they don't update it constantly like
| Canada does. Needs funding I guess.
|
| https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-6-part-e-
| chapter-...
| j7ake wrote:
| Professor at top university like MIT should automatically
| come with green card.
| genmud wrote:
| I would love to see a revamp of visa system that when someone
| is sponsored by companies they are required to do a 1:1 match
| for scholarships on the salary of someone who they are
| sponsoring. Alternatively make the minimum $100k or max
| $250k.
|
| As someone who had someone come over on a O-1 visa, I 100%
| would have been willing to pay double for that person
| specifically.
|
| It also removes the common issue of people who are hiring
| people below market rate or are trying to push salaries down
| for certain industries. It makes companies really make sure
| they actually need that technical expert from overseas.
|
| Then open it up to everyone else if there are quotas.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Rather than doubling the cost a company has to pay for a
| foreign employee, which inevitably pushes down wages for
| high-end talent, why not just rank applicants based on how
| much they're actually paid?
|
| If an employee is recruited at $250k, they clearly have
| skills the market values.
| genmud wrote:
| I don't think it would push down wages for high end
| talent if you keep the requirements they pay prevailing
| wages. If anything, it would increase the wages for
| people.
|
| The point would be that we fill and address the talent
| problem longer term. AKA if you need to hire foreign
| workers, you have to invest in developing new talent.
|
| I would say that total comp should be taken into account,
| but we should take a more strategic approach to
| addressing workforce gaps rather than just relying on
| importing talent.
| wfh wrote:
| If you mean the existing H-1B lottery, see sibling
| comment linking the Forbes article which says "However,
| attorneys say attempting to reorder the H-1B lottery from
| highest to lowest salary by regulation, as the
| administration has discussed, would be unlikely to
| survive a legal challenge."
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| US PhD from top 50 institution in your field with a full-time
| job with salary over 100k/year.
|
| Simple and objective.
| sfblah wrote:
| 100k honestly isn't that much, and PhDs can be sort of
| meaningless depending on the field.
|
| Make it 250k for 3 consecutive years and forget about
| school.
| sfblah wrote:
| How about: "Has had a job for 3 consecutive years paying
| $250k or more per year and has paid federal income taxes
| proving it."
|
| I know plenty of people in this boat from India who wait 15
| years to get a GC because of our idiotic process.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| How about any company that is found to have engaged in
| discrimination against any protected class loses their
| ability to sponsor visas for a decade.
| tacheiordache wrote:
| Not a good punishment as it has workarounds. They'd hire
| through shell companies and when one becomes tainted they'd
| use a different one.
| curun1r wrote:
| I'm an American (born here), but I've felt our skilled
| immigration policies are wrong-headed for a while, especially
| after dealing with them as a hiring manager. Broadly
| speaking, I feel we need a better focus on a) getting people
| who have the skills that our businesses need and b)
| naturalizing those people as US citizens who are willing to
| commit their whole careers to our country. The H1-B system
| seems to be the worst of both worlds...gamified so that bad
| actors get many of the hires and gamified on the employee
| side so you get people, say, sacrificing salary for a better
| green card process.
|
| If I were to propose something different, it would be ratios
| by job title/salary, with obvious veto ability by government
| TLA agencies for security risks. Points systems for skilled
| migration are an in exact proxy and miss out on talented
| people with less formal educations. I'd rather place the
| burden of deciding who gets to work here on businesses who
| are trying to fill actual positions. Let them decide who is
| actually qualified based on the actual skills they're looking
| for. And because they have to hire a requisite number of
| similar-level Americans, the worst thing that might happen is
| a sort of jobs program for Americans when companies are
| forced to employ more Americans to satisfy the ratio needed
| to hire foreigners.
|
| This would have two other benefits that I can see. First, it
| would make it much easier for small companies with primarily-
| American workforces to hire foreigners since they wouldn't
| need so much legal help or luck in winning a visa lottery.
| Second, foreign workers would integrate better because they'd
| always be working with Americans.
|
| The main weakness that would need to be protected against is
| companies under-classifying and underpaying foreign workers
| (i.e. the janitors are American but are up-classified as
| software engineers and the software engineers are foreign and
| paid janitorial wages), but I feel these sorts of situations
| should be addressed by judges when complaints are made
| against companies trying to game the system.
| viewtransform wrote:
| Most immigration to the U.S. is through "family
| reunification".
| theptip wrote:
| My very high level wish is that immigration basically gave a
| free pass to anyone earning more than mean salary, since that
| by definition makes the nation wealthier.
|
| I think you can derive generic and robust definitions of
| "exceptional" like this too; eg anyone that is getting paid
| $1m/yr is clearly exceptional. This is robust to Goodhearting
| because again, net contributor to the wealth of the country.
| (1m is an arbitrary number for discussion, obviously you can
| tune it to get the count you are looking for.)
|
| Trouble is, "exceptional at art" is fundamentally subjective
| and won't show up in salary. Similar salary concerns with
| "exceptionally talented PhD". I think you need per-industry
| considerations here. Top N most-cited AI researchers should
| get a pre-filled green card sent to them.
|
| Personally think we should be allowing any PhD or med school
| graduate from top institutions to stay indefinitely; so many
| talented researchers come to the US to study and then get
| kicked out. We want to keep these people.
| hibikir wrote:
| I would be surprised if it didn't, as other parts of the
| immigration system also warp post graduate education. EB-2
| provides a much easier immigration route than EB-3, and EB-1 is
| easier still: Arguably the only road you can call easy if you
| come from countries that hit the per-country cap. The most
| reliable way to EB-2 is post graduate education. For EB-1, as
| listed here, will be patents and publications after a Ph.D.
|
| So now you go look at your typical STEM department at a good US
| university. As you go into masters and Phds, the percentage of
| foreign students goes up. This isn't because most international
| students love academia: It's because the immigration system, as
| described earlier, just makes the piece of paper they hand you
| so much more valuable that it'd be for someone that is already
| a US citizen. And since it's especially valuable for students
| from visa-capped countries, guess what? Students from those
| countries are disproportionally going through that route.
|
| If we cut the visa limits, and said that a STEM degree and some
| STEM employment after was a guarantee for a green card in 2
| years, I'd expect the number of international students that
| pick that route to plummet. The disparity between the demand
| for green cards and the visa limit is so wide, every year the
| incentive to study longer just increases.
|
| If none of those numbers change, I'd expect that the patent
| route will just be pushed further. So just like the visa caps
| are a subsidy for post graduate degrees, this rule
| clarification will be an implicit subsidy for patent attorneys.
| Then we'll have yet another set of people with a lot to lose if
| we raise the visa limits, or stop the per-country quotas.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > This isn't because most international students love
| academia: It's because the immigration system, as described
| earlier, just makes the piece of paper they hand you so much
| more valuable that it'd be for someone that is already a US
| citizen.
|
| Nonsense. I've been at a typical STEM department at a top us
| institution for a decade and interacted with thousands of
| students. I can count the number of students who were in it
| for a visa. You don't do a 5-6 year PhD simply for a green
| card. There are easier ways.
| cyberax wrote:
| > There are easier ways.
|
| Such as?..
|
| If you're from a capped country, your options are limited.
| For EB-2/EB-3 the wait time for Indian nationals is around
| 12 years.
| hiddencost wrote:
| That is what parents are.
|
| They're acquired either by huge companies for a defensive
| portfolio or by retired old men who get scammed by bottom
| feeding lawyers willing to file anything for their fee.
| geodel wrote:
| > if this will lead people to spam the patent office with low
| quality inventions hoping something will stick and help them
| secure a EB-1 visa.
|
| Not much really. The reason being it is already happening as
| incredibly common thing for last few decades or maybe even
| longer.
|
| I have seen many _fine researchers_ at workplace like you
| mentioned above.
| lgleason wrote:
| Expect further downward pressure on US tech salaries.
| _factor wrote:
| At the benefit of a stronger economy.
| mlindner wrote:
| Completely agree. The pay is high because the demand is
| higher than the supply.
| addicted wrote:
| Ah yes, the last 30 odd years of increasing immigration has
| exerted tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries.
|
| And countries in Europe that have not seen as much Tech
| immigration have seen huge boosts in Tech salaries. Comparable
| Europeans earn almost 1/3 - 1/2 what their American
| counterparts do today!
| dougmwne wrote:
| But really, it's much easier to enter the EU. You have dozens
| of countries with their own rules so there are many more
| options. Plus immigration rules tend to be much easier than
| the US with its famously strict legal immigration with low
| caps.
|
| Indeed, this balance between supply and demand is exactly
| what keeps US tech salaries high. Our dynamic economy creates
| a lot of tech roles while our restrictive immigration limits
| high skill immigrants from filling those roles, raising
| salaries.
|
| Tech companies have been lobbying unsuccessfully for years to
| raise or eliminate the h-1b cap, which would absolutely cut
| salaries. That's why they are lobbying for it, to reduce
| their labor costs.
|
| Personally I think this is all going to be moot anyway. With
| software development becoming a mostly remote role after the
| pandemic, I've seen a lot less barrier over the past few
| years to hiring offshore teams. My own small division of 100
| people has offshore teams in 3 countries.
| jupp0r wrote:
| And yet there is very little tech immigration into Europe,
| comparatively. Must be the low salaries.
| alephnerd wrote:
| You can earn European level tech salaries in Bangalore
| and Beijing now. There isn't as much demand to move there
| and uproot your family just for $30-50k a year.
| bequanna wrote:
| I'd be curious to hear opinions on why this large
| compensation discrepancy exists.
|
| AFAIK, my company has never considered outsourcing to remote
| Euro workers. Is there a perceived difference in engineer
| quality? Time difference?
| jupp0r wrote:
| Having worked in the EU and the US, here are some
| differences that I think are relevant for global employers:
|
| - The hiring pool is much smaller than in the US, one
| reason is probably demographics and lack of skilled
| immigration. This makes it less attractive to hire/grow
| there.
|
| - Labor regulation is much more strict. It's legally hard
| and expensive to lay off workers in Germany, for example.
|
| - Taxes are much higher than in the US, so even if
| employers spend a lot of money on payroll, much less of it
| will end up in employees checking accounts.
|
| - Demand is much lower. Tech industry in Europe is
| definitely there, but not booming to the same degree as in
| the US.
| imtringued wrote:
| >Labor regulation is much more strict. It's legally hard
| and expensive to lay off workers in Germany, for example.
|
| Is a few months notice [0] too much to ask? You can fire
| anyone you want, you're just going to wait a little bit
| or pay their remaining salary if you want them gone
| immediately. There is nothing legally hard about it. The
| hardest part is probably that you have to physically mail
| the layoff notice, but nothing prevents you from just
| directly giving it to them straight into their hands to
| be perfectly compliant with the law. Also, most of these
| laws only apply to companies with employee counts in the
| double digits. Not to small startups hiring their third
| employee.
|
| [0] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__622.html
| jupp0r wrote:
| There's much more to this than you cite. There's
| Betriebsrat and Sozialplan etc. I'm not at all saying any
| of this is bad, but it does play an important role when
| companies make decisions about where to put their
| engineering centers.
| imtringued wrote:
| Have you heard how hardware companies like AMD suck at
| software?
|
| Now imagine an entire country specialising in hardware like
| Germany.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| >Is there a perceived difference in engineer quality?
|
| Intuitively, yes. If you're both brilliant, care about
| money, and want to stay and live in the EU, you aren't
| going to be a software engineer.
|
| In the US, it's a solid path to a lucrative career.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > Ah yes, the last 30 odd years of increasing immigration has
| exerted tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries.
|
| I'm not 100% sure, so I have to ask. Are you being sarcastic
| about immigration not exerting tremendous downward pressure
| on US tech salaries?
| dougmwne wrote:
| This affects very few immigrants of extraordinary ability. Such
| people are likely to be job creators with the companies and
| products they build. I agree that if we were to lift the cap on
| H-1b visas it could easily destroy tech salaries. Thankfully
| that's not under consideration.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Most H1-B visas don't go to engineering roles. Expanding
| those quotas wouldn't affect engineering salaries, but
| probably IT support roles, etc.
| dougmwne wrote:
| If you open the door wide enough, salaries will drop. It's
| an economic reality. It may be a very good thing for the
| wider economy and stock market though. Right now critical
| roles that enable high productivity work are behind a tall
| wall of a multi-100k salary. It's possible that we are
| letting a small number of engineers get early retirements
| in exchange for a drag on the whole economy.
| ketzo wrote:
| Intuitively, yes; factually (looking at the last 30 years of
| tech), categorically false.
|
| Tech begets tech, tech jobs beget tech jobs. Personally, I
| think we are not _remotely_ close to "peak software" in
| particular.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The reality of Canadian tech salaries would disagree with
| you.
|
| Our immigration system targets skilled workers from abroad,
| and brings in a _lot_ of them. It 's a far more "rational"
| and less confusing system than the US, but also explicitly
| geared around bringing in skilled workers as permanent
| residents and it brings in a lot of them.
|
| The downward pressure on compensation rates is real. Apart
| from exceptions in FAANG type companies, salaries here are
| often 1/2 of the rates of US employers, and it isn't because
| we're a lower quality product.
|
| As a result a large % of us just move south to the US on a TN
| visa, or take remote jobs from US employers. Because the
| disparity in compensation is very high. And it's in large
| part because the market here is flooded with talent from
| abroad.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The Canadian tech market is particularly small by most
| standards.
|
| Tech salaries there are lower than what a skilled employee
| can get in Israel, China, or India.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| But the increase in tech jobs doesn't benefit existing
| workers. Compare https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-
| of-the-vanishing... :
|
| > According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74%
| of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A
| decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born
| abroad. In 2000, only 29% were.
|
| > Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000
| jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we _created
| 100,000 engineering positions_ in the last decade, we've also
| _displaced 88,000 domestic engineers._ [1]
|
| > American tech workers are getting pushed out, and they
| aren't coming back
|
| If the downward pressure on salary in American software jobs
| is so extreme that salaries frequently go all the way to
| zero, while there is a countervailing upward pressure on
| salary among Indian no-job-yets, why do we say it's
| "categorically false" that there is a downward pressure on
| American software salaries?
|
| [1] Note that this is what you expect from a pricing shift,
| not an increase in the value created by the work. The
| quantity of software labor purchased has gone up and sellers
| are being forced out. If the driver of increased quantity-of-
| jobs were increased value created, you would see sellers
| _entering_ the market, not leaving.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Both you and the blog are conflating leaving the Bay Area
| with losing your job.
|
| Yeah. A lot of people are leaving because of the housing
| insanity. That doesn't mean they're leaving teach and
| losing their jobs. There is zero evidence for that.
|
| This isn't evidence for any impact on jobs. It's evidence
| for the mismanagement of the Bay Area and California as a
| whole.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| The economy is not a zero sum game.
|
| The US created literally all relevant consumer technology in
| the last 30 or so years and demand for tech talent has exploded
| ever since.
|
| Having a competitve sector/ economy which regularly pushes the
| edge of innovation and hence expands demand (both on sell and
| supply side) is actually what keeps salaries up.
|
| This logic is as deeply flawed as often as it comes up.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| The myth is that these measures must be taken because of
| "shortages of workers" when there are plenty of US citizens
| in STEM who are underemployed.
|
| This narrative is purely a lobbying effort.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > ... when there are plenty of US citizens in STEM who are
| underemployed.
|
| Where, exactly?
|
| Unemployment rate among STEM graduates is half of that of
| the general population [0]. Salaries are also substantially
| higher [1], and keep getting higher [2].
|
| [0] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-
| unemployment...).
|
| [1] https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-median-
| wage-....
|
| [2]
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25433814-000-most-
| ste...
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| Unemployment != underemployment.
|
| So the unemployment rate in your first article is not
| relevant, missing labor participation rates etc.
|
| The second article is about median wages of people who
| are already in jobs categorized as stem. Same with the
| third, which is also only about the derivative.
|
| > Where, exactly?
|
| The most prominent segment can be found by dropping the
| engineering and tech. Biology, math, physics, chemistry,
| etc. However even in engineering we find that the top
| grads move into software or finance.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| It seems that data is not relevant, then?
|
| I would appreciate it if you were to provide some hard
| numbers to back your conjecture that immigration is the
| reason for these cases of "underemployment", like you
| call it.
|
| > However even in engineering we find that the top grads
| move into software or finance.
|
| Software engineering is notorious for being one of the
| markets with the most H-1B visa holders, yet you are
| saying that most "top grads" move into it for better
| wages?
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| I didn't make up the word underemployment, economists
| did.
|
| Here is some data that tries to at least look at this
| question:
| https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/06/does-
| majoring...
|
| The gross number is only 1/3 of stem degree lead to stem
| jobs. But that includes quite a bit of soft degree's,
| still in the ballpark of half of all graduates not
| working in their field.
|
| > software jobs
|
| Yes there is higher demand for software which is met with
| higher wages and drawing underemployed people with other
| degrees as well as immigration. The immigration
| restriction argument is that increasing that part of the
| equation will lower wages and increase corporate control
| of their workforce.
|
| So an alternative way to meet that demand is to hire us
| citizens who have those qualifications or a related
| degree that could be trained.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I'm not seeing it either. The only engineers I met who
| are 'under employed' either left the field intentionally,
| decided to go backpack Europe for 3 years after they
| graduated (some fields it definitely seems like if your
| not in the field for awhile the value of your degree
| vanishes), or they graduated and moved to a place where I
| live with a ChemE degree looking for ChemE jobs when we
| have maybe 2 companies in town that hire a small number
| of ChemEs. It is a highly desired location, so why pay an
| inexperience ungrad when you can score a ChemE moving
| into the area with a decades experience at a good price.
|
| Another good one. We hired a person with a MechE degree
| with experience working at JPL into our customer support
| because they are so in love with the area because of easy
| access to winter activities (snow shoing, skiing, etc).
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yes it is. Every foreign employee getting that tech job is a
| US citizen from the Midwest not getting it. Fuck this
| dishonest talking point, I know people coding since high
| school working at Toyota plants while people from overseas
| with entry level skill sets have employers move them to the
| west coast and land jobs (for whatever reason.)
|
| It's favoritism, it's cronyism, it's a nation putting its own
| struggling people last and it most certainly is zero sum.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > a US citizen from the Midwest not getting it
|
| No offense, but maybe your resume didn't reflect that you
| had the skills required.
|
| The companies I worked at and now portfolio companies of
| mine pay Bay Area market rate to both citizens and non-
| citizens.
|
| We hire noncitizens because we didn't find the right talent
| we need.
| blasphemers wrote:
| So basically you only have open engineering positions in
| the same few markets that every other tech company does
| and then you complain when you can't find enough
| engineers. Engineering talent doesn't only exist on the
| coasts, despite startup tech culture pretending it does.
| alephnerd wrote:
| We listed all these jobs remotely. There just aren't that
| many engineers who know OS Internals, eBPF, or XDP in
| Indiana compared to Tel Aviv or Bangalore.
| remarkEon wrote:
| That is a policy problem. Opening up more immigration
| makes that problem worse, not better. It should be a
| question that everyone asks: why do US Universities not
| create an adequate supply of workers to meet the demand
| of the market? No one seems to care and the solution is
| always "just do more immigration". Makes no sense.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I worked on the policy side before I entered tech.
|
| You can't "command economy" human capital. It just
| doesn't work.
|
| Upskilling has a 5-10 year long lag time.
|
| Immigration is the only reason America hasn't stumbled
| like Europe, Japan, or Korea demographically.
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| The industry is so huge thats impossible to teach every
| aspect of the tech industry. The universities teach
| widely applicable curriculum.
|
| Companies should train employees, simple as.
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| I guarantee you theres tons of engineers with backgrounds
| in O.S./Networking that could learn those things very
| quickly.
|
| I bet most people working in it learned on the job. The
| certainly dont teach every single specific detail of the
| entire tech industry in universities.
|
| This is just gaslighting.
| allemagne wrote:
| Do companies have a moral obligation to distribute jobs
| geographically?
|
| Assuming that the issue is that these positions weren't
| remote then if they decided that they're better served by
| workers that live locally then they're either right and
| you're asking them to harm their own interests for yours
| or they're wrong and they're just leaving money on the
| table for a competitor. If they aren't harmed for giving
| up a competitive edge then that monopoly power to just
| ignore the market is the actual problem.
|
| Either way, work visas isn't even close to the most
| salient problem. Restrict them and who's to say how
| startups will find loopholes to avoid hiring who we want
| them to hire. Let's just cut out all the messiness and
| cut them checks directly. Call it reparations for the
| coasts ignoring the good honest midwest American talent
| all these years.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Restrict them and who's to say how startups will find
| loopholes
|
| We'll just open offices in Israel, Eastern Europe, and
| India instead and pay 70% of a US salary. It already
| started happening in 2019, and avalanched during the
| pandemic.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > We hire noncitizens because we didn't find the right
| talent we need.
|
| (the right talent at the shit-level wage we want to pay)
| is more often than not the rest of that sentence.
| alephnerd wrote:
| $200-300k base with 15% annual bonus and equity
| ($300k-750k when I was working at public companies. I
| can't speak to my portfolio company's equity practices)
| is not a shit wage.
|
| We needed people who understood stuff like XDP and worked
| on it for years.
|
| The talent pool for low level development, OS Dev,
| cybersecurity, networking, and some parts of ML is sparse
| in the US compared to Israel, Eastern Europe, China, and
| India.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The problem is that instead of building a domestic talent
| pipeline for high demand skills we take the easy route
| and grab immigrants for it. So the talent pipeline never
| gets built, and then we continue to be dependent on
| immigration. This is obviously not your company's fault
| because they are not policy makers, but if companies like
| yours were told "too bad, hire and train locally" you
| would get it done. e.g. I am a software engineer that
| currently has a TC of around $200K, and none of the
| skills you need, but I could easily be trained and learn
| any of that for a 300-750K TC at the end.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > companies like yours were told "too bad, hire and train
| locally"
|
| Companies would collapse and fail, unless the government
| gave a massive corporate stimulus package (probably 4-5x
| the size of PPE).
|
| > none of the skills you need, but I could easily be
| trained
|
| It would take at least 1-2 years. At that point, an
| Israeli or Indian startup has taken market share and won.
| Welcome to cybersecurity and networking.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I am unpersuaded as I have never heard of a company that
| collapsed and was replaced by foreign competition because
| they couldn't get enough H1Bs. But even if this is
| correct, the best that should get you is N visas for the
| next 2 years and then no more because you will have built
| the local talent pipeline you need by then.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I replied to OP saying "only hire domestic" for every
| role.
|
| Even National Labs don't do that.
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| Nothing in tech takes that long to learn if you have
| someone with a decent background in the subject...
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > your resume didn't reflect
|
| One observation I've made throughout the years of
| reviewing tech resumes - if I get a resume from a U.S.
| citizen, I (and anybody else) immediately know the
| difference between MIT/Stanford vs. "The University of
| Wisconsin" without even researching it. OTOH, I have no
| idea what the difference between the University of
| Hyderabad vs. the University of New Delhi, and there's
| not really a good way for me to tell. Foreign applicants
| actually have an _advantage_ over U.S. citizens in that
| the person reviewing their resume will almost certainly
| bin all of the resumes into the same "ok, has a degree"
| vs. a potentially unconscious "ah, ok, couldn't get into
| an ivy league".
| jevoten wrote:
| No wonder they can't find workers, if from a nation of
| 334 million, all but ~16k/year [1] are considered
| substandard because they couldn't get into an Ivy.
|
| Edit: More relevant is comparing Ivy undergrads (64.5k)
| to all US undergrads (20.3 million) [2], meaning only the
| top 0.3% make the cut.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League - total
| number of undergrads (64.5k), divided by 4, assuming a
| 4-year college course.
|
| [2]
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/235406/undergraduate-
| enr...
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| Agreed thats insane.
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| This is another dishonest talking point.
|
| With most tech jobs if a person has a computer science
| background they have the skills.
|
| The company is just lying to justify outsourcing.
| lgleason wrote:
| Exactly! The companies often prefer the people on H1B visas
| because the workers have to be much more subservient or
| risk being deported and they have leverage to pay them at
| the lower end of the salary range for the position/level.
| anon-sre-srm wrote:
| Yep. This is the TCS consulting business model.
|
| Interestingly, the meat ag and farming employs (no pun
| intended) similar tactics with undocumented people
| working in near-or-de facto slavery conditions that are
| very dangerous. The major meat processing plants in the
| US advertise salaries in Mexican and Central American
| newspapers to encourage migration. And, the US
| immigration system is a Kafkaesque, Byzantine,
| understaffed nightmare purposefully to keep official
| immigration meeting socio-political objectives of
| appearing selective. In truth, it facilitates megacorps
| importing large numbers of foreign knowledge workers
| through official channels while criminalizing and
| marginalizing undocumented people to be under the thumbs
| of other megacorps monetizing unpleasant work society
| inconveniently needs to function.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| This is the most clueless take here.
|
| It is so obviously not zero sum. From Google to Yahoo to
| eBay to Palantir. None of those hundreds of thousands of
| jobs would exist without immigrants. Or they would be
| overseas.
|
| I'm sorry for your friends who cannot get tech jobs. It's
| time to level up their skills. No competent developer can't
| find a job in this economy.
|
| Stop blaming immigrants for your own shortcomings.
| anonfromsomewhe wrote:
| if US citizen with all best resources in the world for
| entire lifetime, is losing opportunity to some 3rd nation,
| maybe he/she/they is not competitive enough?
| greatpostman wrote:
| Yup, people love to deny this but it's true
| gourabmi wrote:
| I think it is more about leaving their comfort zones. One
| might have to move out of their towns / states to access
| resources that the US has to offer. Dozens of US states
| offers so much support to their students studying STEM. You
| can defer education loan payments. There is so much federal
| aid. There are dirt cheap colleges if you want to get
| vocational education and start working quickly. But all of
| these are not available in one city. They are spread across
| the nation.
|
| Globalization is a two way street. If you want the best of
| what the world has to offer, the best of what the world has
| to offer will arrive at your doorstep. That includes human
| resources.
| probablynish wrote:
| > Every foreign employee getting that tech job is a US
| citizen from the Midwest not getting it.
|
| This concentration of high paid tech jobs would not exist
| in the first place if it weren't for the foreigners. Look
| at the number of tech startups founded by immigrants. More
| broadly consider that if a different country became the
| global hub for top tech talent, capital would go there, and
| that country would become the home of high paid tech
| salaries.
|
| The main input into a tech company is 'human capital' (hard
| working, highly intelligent, people) - Americans benefit
| from the spillover effects of having their country be the
| global nexus of human capital.
|
| BTW, India is seeing significant upwards pressure on tech
| salaries and a boom in the number of domestic tech
| companies and jobs. This is at least partly spurred by
| restrictive American immigration policies forcing Indians
| to go back home. Purely economically speaking, I don't
| think America is the winner here.
| cyberax wrote:
| > Yes it is. Every foreign employee getting that tech job
| is a US citizen from the Midwest not getting it.
|
| That's simply not true. The alternative is often just not
| having this job at all. A tech startup without employees
| can just fail, without creating any jobs.
|
| And the guy from the Midwest will be worse off in the end.
| 8note wrote:
| The US citizen from the Midwest could move to California
| and make a startup; they aren't gated by having a job
| beforehand.
|
| On the other hand, if all the foreign talent congregates
| elsewhere, the Midwest kid will need a visa to compete with
| them.
|
| The non-zero sum is that having all the people in one place
| makes more opportunities than if they weren't together.
| retinaros wrote:
| america hegemony exists since the germans rocket scientists
| immigrated to work at nasa. the tech sector is the same
| story.google pretty much created the web revolution and it
| was a russian immigrant leading it creating millions of
| jobs. the next big moment was musk, an immigrant with
| tesla.
| linuxftw wrote:
| People in tech have blinders are. We're already in tech, so we
| don't see the repercussions. Entry level jobs are almost non-
| existent, they're all going overseas and to indentured
| servants.
| Clubber wrote:
| This is just a repeat of what started in the 90s (probably
| earlier). It's really a scheme for companies to get access to
| more talent to drive wages down.
| alephnerd wrote:
| News flash. The demand has started to slow down.
|
| 20 years ago, the Chinese backlog used to be in the decades
| range. Now it's 2 years.
|
| The Indian backlog used to be multi-decade too, but is now
| 11.
|
| Already, we've had engineers at portfolio companies decide
| to return to India to either earn a dollar salary or start
| their own startup.
|
| At this point, we've decided to straight up outsource jobs
| to India, Israel, and Eastern Europe. The talent base we
| need doesn't exist in the US.
|
| These guys could have become taxing paying members of
| American society. Now they'll make contributions to India,
| Eastern Europe, and Israel instead
| coredog64 wrote:
| > Now they'll make contributions to India, Eastern Europe
|
| Good! There's a billion people in India and plenty of
| opportunities for growth. The net benefit for all of
| humanity is larger if they stay there.
|
| Put another way, is it really all that great that the US
| drains the top talent out of India and Eastern Europe?
| alephnerd wrote:
| It does when those people who leave have a chip on their
| shoulder due to bad experiences with the US.
|
| For example, the founder of Zoho (Sridhar Vembu - I
| actually lived in the same apartment complex in the Bay
| Area that he started Zoho at) has become a NatSec cabinet
| advisor to Narendra Modi's administration, and has a chip
| on his shoulder about his experience dealing with US
| immigration. It was a big reason he returned to India.
|
| Wang Huning, the Chairman of the Chinese Politburo and Xi
| Jinping's right hand man - soured on the US after his
| experience dealing with the US as a student.
|
| A good friend of mine from college in the ML space who's
| parents are pretty high up in the ruling party of a major
| SEA state has been constantly complaining to me and them
| about how they lost 2 chances at the F1 to H1B
| conversion, and every single time became more and more
| ambivalent about the US. They can end up returning to SEA
| and make a large company, but they will also have a chip
| on their shoulder about the US.
|
| Another good friend of mine was an Indian national who
| specialized in EE and Condensed Matter Physics
| (semiconductors type work) - even did grad school in it
| at a Stanford type program. He left the US to work for a
| major Chinese company in SEA because immigration in the
| US was horrid.
|
| Plenty of Israelis feel the same way now about the US due
| to similar experiences.
|
| The US Immigration system exudes a sense of American
| exceptionalism because voters say "Love it or leave it".
| But the people who leave end up becoming successful, but
| still angry at how much effort and stress was expended
| for naught.
|
| China is now a near peer in 2023. There's no reason to
| fuel anti-Americanism in India, SEA, LatAm, etc and push
| them to the other side.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/immigrati...
|
| China and India combined take in less than a tenth of the
| immigrants the US takes in yearly. There's really no
| reason anyone should take their opinions on immigration
| seriously.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I think you missed the entire point of my post above.
|
| The US's biggest strength is it's soft power at the elite
| level.
|
| Because of bad experiences like immigration, the US has
| been losing influence as foreign decision makers soured
| on the US due to crap treatment.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Because of bad experiences like immigration, the US has
| been losing influence as foreign decision makers soured
| on the US due to crap treatment.
|
| So what?
| creato wrote:
| He didn't miss the point. You're missing the point that
| if these people soured the US because it was hard to
| immigrate, they are being very hypocritical. It's hard to
| immigrate anywhere ("crap treatment"), including the
| countries they came from.
| jltsiren wrote:
| It's somewhat difficult to immigrate to most places, but
| usually the difficulties can be resolved in weeks or
| months. The US level of difficulty is an exception, not
| the norm.
|
| Or more accurately, the processes are obfuscated and full
| of inexplicable delays. Why would someone even consider
| hiring a lawyer for something as simple and common as
| employment-based immigration? And how can the green card
| process take longer than a few months?
| geodel wrote:
| If it were that bad people would've stopped migrating to
| US long long back. In this case people are speaking with
| their feet (including those who chose to go back)
| matrix87 wrote:
| > The US Immigration system exudes a sense of American
| exceptionalism because voters say "Love it or leave it".
| But the people who leave end up becoming successful, but
| still angry at how much effort and stress was expended
| for naught.
|
| That's funny. I guess every visa holder is some little
| genius doing particle physics work
|
| You're going out of your way to give very specific
| anecdotes here, the average level of talent I've met on a
| visa is something very easily matched domestically. It's
| pretty hilarious actually, some of them can't actually
| program and have an SWE job title
| geodel wrote:
| Great point. If out of many million immigrants few
| brilliant ones went back due to _bad_ experience and
| achieved great success back home, I 'd say it is
| excellent system already for US in terms of overall
| people chose to stay and people went back to great
| success.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > achieved great success back home
|
| And then begin lobbying against the United States.
| stackskipton wrote:
| >Entry level jobs are almost non-existent, they're all going
| overseas and to indentured servants.
|
| Which is now having impact on hiring higher level positions
| because we broke the pipeline of Jr. -> Mid Level -> Sr.
| danking00 wrote:
| People who gain citizenship are no longer in a precarious visa
| situation nor tied to their current employer. Moving people off
| visas and into PR/citizenship would seem to me to remove
| downward pressure on salaries.
|
| Heck, workers with PR/citizenship are probably more likely to
| unionize for higher wages because they feel safer.
| bee_rider wrote:
| But this admits that the more generous and open policy might
| also be more practical. Can't have that, it is too good.
| lgleason wrote:
| You are forgetting the law of supply and demand. More supply
| and the same demand leads to lower prices.
| pvg wrote:
| From a few people already working in the US for years getting
| green cards?
| snakeyjake wrote:
| My employer cannot hire H1Bs. They are prohibited by law. All
| employees must be US citizens.
|
| They pay extremely competitive rates. They are the reason for
| and a source of complaints regarding gentrification in my area.
|
| edit: as an example the starting rate for high school work-
| study and college interns is the hourly equivalent of $78k/yr
| plus the same benefits as full-time employees from the second
| they show up.
|
| The work environment is spectacular. There is no work from home
| because that is a practical impossibility so the work-life
| balance is carefully considered and benefits are outstanding.
| There are no after-hours tasks (there can't be, really).
|
| You show up, work 9-5 in a relaxed environment, go home, cash
| your fat check, and enjoy travel and hobbies.
|
| From IPC soldering-certified technicians to senior RF
| scientists and everything in between we cannot find enough
| workers for the amount of work we have.
|
| For sexy startups trying to use sexy AI to steal user data in
| order to serve them sexy ads yes, maybe the market is
| saturated.
|
| For hard-STEM fields my experience has been that there are too
| few people who take their linear algebra classes seriously.
| pc86 wrote:
| I worked for a sexy startup (non AI and didn't steal user
| data, but did have ads) that got bought by one of these big
| hard-STEM companies. The scientists there who had 15 YOE and
| a PhD made less than programmers on our side with no college
| degree and 2-3 years of experience programming.
|
| Hard-STEM seems to have lots of jobs where you can grind your
| ass off for the better part of a decade or two and hope to
| make $100-120k/yr by then if you're lucky. At least on the
| coding side you'll get to that level within a handful of
| years if you're willing to job switch often and optimize for
| that salary. Glad to hear there's at least one hard-STEM
| place where the grind isn't as bad.
| raverbashing wrote:
| True
|
| The "hard-stem" places rely on a bit of gaslighting and the
| "holier than thou" self-image of the "hard-stem" people to
| pay them less and to overwork them
|
| As much as the IT world has issues, it is night and day
| compared to the hard-stem world where a lot of times they
| won't even look at you if you don't have a MSc or PhD.
| Learn on the job, what is that?
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| What is staff level total compensation? In big tech you can
| make $1M/year with 8 years of experience.
| fallingknife wrote:
| You could do that with rapid valuation increases in tech
| shares over the last 10 years inflating your RSU award, and
| even then you're talking < 1% of engineers at that comp
| level. And that path is very likely closed now at FAANG
| (poor staff SWE will have to suffer with $400K TC). TCs in
| the millions will be reserved for high ranks at large
| companies, a few lucky early engineers at billion dollar
| startups, and phds in AI or whatever the new hotness is at
| the time.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| I still see L7 and L8 offers like this handed out. You
| act like 99% of people can work profitably in hard
| science. What parent poster said is also available sub 1%
| of talent.
| bradlys wrote:
| L7 and L8 aren't staff. That's senior staff and
| principle. They're both pretty hard to get and are very
| small portions of any company.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| That's true. L6 offers are 700k to 900k plus whatever
| stock appreciation and refreshers. L7+ has nominal value
| of 1M+.
|
| My point is for the past several years staff has been
| clearing 1M W2 or more per year and the nominal offers
| are high 6 figures. L7 and L8 offers are nominally 1M.
|
| If I could make that money working on cool science and
| aerospace I would. When I graduated, Boeing, Lockheed etc
| wouldn't give me the time of day but adtech welcomed me
| and paid me more in 1 year than Boeing would have in 10.
| bradlys wrote:
| L6 being 700k+ is a top tier offer even from a big
| company. That's an exceptional offer for staff. I know
| several people in staff roles and they were not offered
| that comp upfront. They get to that through appreciation.
| tsudounym wrote:
| As someone not far removed from university, you will have a
| very hard time finding US citizens who take linear algebra
| seriously and also have a willingness to work for the Mil
| Industrial Complex (which this sounds like)
| snakeyjake wrote:
| Only half, roughly, of our revenue comes from the
| Department of Defense.
|
| If you have:
|
| * Received an alert on your phone saying that it's going to
| rain in your local area in the next 10 minutes,
|
| * Been alarmed by a paper containing synthetic aperture
| radar data showing high-resolution plots of coastal erosion
| and sea level rise, or
|
| * Used a map or route planning application that has
| satellite imagery textured onto high-resolution terrain and
| 3d models of buildings and landmarks,
|
| You've PROBABLY used our products.
|
| The military just the sugar daddy who pays for the other
| stuff.
|
| I mean, I don't do any of that stuff.
|
| I just stare at error-ridden digikey product listings all
| day, argue with PMs about the reality of their schedules,
| and sit through endless design reviews. But somehow,
| someone somewhere in the company does that stuff.
| m_nyongesa wrote:
| I'm a U.S. citizen who does 1 hour of linear algebra first
| thing in the morning, when I'm not getting crushed by PhD-
| related deadlines. Currently working through Lang's _Linear
| Algebra_ for a new take on the material.
|
| (side note: for the first 5 months of 2023 I did 1.5 hours a
| day of real analysis. I'll probably get back to doing that
| after getting through most of Lang.)
|
| Can you give me a hint of the types of employers I should be
| looking for who would value this? How should I go about
| finding them?
| ndiddy wrote:
| > My employer cannot hire H1Bs. They are prohibited by law.
| All employees must be US citizens.
|
| If this is a contractor that requires security clearances,
| that's a significant barrier to recruiting even US citizens.
| Most of your best applicants will be snapped up by someone
| else prior to completing the months long clearance process
| (which requires telling their current employer they're
| looking to move elsewhere at the start).
| genmud wrote:
| If it's just export controlled stuff(radar, dual use stuff),
| technically you can hire non US citizens, and IIRC it's
| actually discrimination if you only hire US citizens. But you
| need to get export licenses, which they might not grant based
| on the country of citizenship, and they require permanent
| residence.
|
| But let's be honest, it's pretty standard practice to require
| US citizenship.
| jdiez17 wrote:
| Sounds like a NewSpace company... but not SpaceX.
| elteto wrote:
| Nope. You can (and will) take a lot of work home in the
| space industry. And remote work is definitely allowed.
|
| This is most likely an intelligence/defense agency or
| contractor, working in secure environments where you can't
| take work stuff in or out.
| probablynish wrote:
| I interned at a company that can hire H1Bs. They do so often.
| My manager and several coworkers were not US citizens. I
| received the hourly equivalent of more than $78k/yr, with a
| great working environment. I'm not sure what your comment
| proves?
|
| There are several companies in my area that can only hire US
| Citizens, and they all pay lower than the company I interned
| at.
|
| This kind of issue cannot be analyzed anecdotally.
| jupp0r wrote:
| Only if you believe you live in a zero sum world, which every
| serious study will show you don't.
| probablynish wrote:
| The article says that most of these approvals are going to tech
| entrepreneurs / startup founders. The effect of this seems to
| be to create new companies that otherwise wouldn't have
| existed, spurring demand for tech workers. The net effect of
| this is upwards pressure on wages if anything.
|
| More generally, if another country became the global nexus for
| top tech talent, capital would eventually follow there, and the
| long term effect on US tech salaries would be negative.
| jmyeet wrote:
| There's no changes that affect the real bottleneck: the annual
| quota on green cards and the per-country limits of 7% or children
| aging out. Those all require Congressional action and that's just
| not going to happen in the current political environment [1].
|
| Here's my take: you get a work visa for 3-5 years that's tied to
| your employer and allows you to freely leave and re-enter the US.
| Believe it or not, we still have visa holders that can't leave
| the US without having to re-apply for their visa.
|
| On renewal that becomes a 3-5 year visa that isn't tied to your
| employer. You can freely change jobs.
|
| At the end of that period, it just becomes a green card as long
| as you satisfy presence tests. Naturalization has continuous and
| physical presence tests. Just use those. Failing that it is
| simply renewed for another 3-5 years.
|
| If you satisfy the extraordinary category or get a NIW you simply
| skip the first step of having an employer-tied visa.
|
| This would free up USCIS to deal with actual visa fraud rather
| than all the pointless hoops they currently (are forced to)
| enforce.
|
| [1]:
| https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2023/12/21/congre...
| pc86 wrote:
| Won't this just dramatically shrink the number of initial work
| visas given out? Because you'll have to assume each one is now
| just a green card with extra steps.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Why do we need a quota for qualified people getting work
| visas (or green cards) at all? We don't.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If the qualifications are for a field that has 95 workers
| for every 100 jobs, come on in. If it's for a field that
| already has 105 workers for every 100 jobs, I can see a lot
| of reasons ($$$) why current residents would want to see
| their potential competitors stifled or limited in number.
| rayiner wrote:
| Because we don't want an unlimited number of foreigners
| moving into the country? Like it or not that's the reason
| Congress won't touch the issue, right?
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Please check the requirements for each of the "national
| interest waivers" and tell me how many "unlimited
| foreigners" meet that requirement.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| TIL: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-
| states/permanent...
| gourabmi wrote:
| This "unlimited number" argument is a common dog whistle.
| If the Dept of Labor is certifying each one of the
| qualified immigrants and vetting the credentials, how is
| this unlimited?
| peyton wrote:
| Dog whistle for what? Calling for deportation? The
| comment is literally just "we can't take every
| immigrant." What other position is there?
| gourabmi wrote:
| You should not take every immigrant. Take immigrants who
| bring their skills and productivity to you. Don't make
| their lives difficult with unnecessary hoops to jump
| through. Skilled immigration is not asylum or illegal
| immigration.
| geodel wrote:
| Well they are taking 100s of thousands immigrants as they
| see reasonable. What is problem with following
| established rules and timelines? Immigrants would surely
| be aware of those before even thinking of immigration.
|
| Besides if Europe / Australia / Canada have much simpler
| immigration why would any skilled/productive prospective
| immigrant would even think of US.
| Jalad wrote:
| > Besides if Europe / Australia / Canada have much
| simpler immigration why would any skilled/productive
| prospective immigrant would even think of US.
|
| US wages are significantly higher, and it also has a much
| more developed tech industry (picking the T from STEM
| since that's what I know about most).
|
| The US's tech industry succeeds in spite of their
| immigration policies, not because of it
| gourabmi wrote:
| 1. The problem with established rules and timelines is
| they are have been outdated for decades and do not
| reflect the reality we live in. If the same logic was
| applied to federal minimum wage, it would never be raised
| because the number has been well established at an
| arbitrary time in the past. That is surely not the case
| and hence timely revisions are necessary.
|
| 2. Immigrants are absolutely aware of this. That is
| reason why overall skilled immigration has not grown by
| leaps and bounds in the last few years like it did
| decades ago. US is no longer the top destination of
| choice for international students in STEM fields. It is
| only a matter of time that you'd see the effects on
| overall productivity. The Social Security Administration
| is already hinting towards this future. The funds are
| supposed to run out by 2041 (reference https://www.ssa.go
| v/newsletter/Statement%20Insert%2025+.pdf ) . Quoting
| from the document ".. the birth rate is low, the ratio of
| workers to beneficiaries is falling.." . The US simply
| doesn't have enough productive people to fund benefits
| for the population for the coming decades.
| krisoft wrote:
| Your take sound reasonable and practical.
|
| The only problem with it is that the problems it solves are
| problems for people who don't have a say in the matter. While
| the drawbacks it implies affects people who have a say in the
| matter. (Either through voting or lobbying)
|
| The fact that the current system imposes a form of long
| identured servitude on imigrants is not a bug but a feature.
| This benefits the employers in very direct ways.
|
| The fact that the current system processes applications from
| select regions of the world much faster than other regions of
| the world is not a bug but a feature. It is a system which
| maintains plausible deniability while in effect racially
| selective. This is a sad and quite odious, but it appears to be
| consistent with the preferences of many voters.
|
| All in all: a good plan with some fatal flaws. And I am very
| sad to say that.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > The fact that the current system imposes a form of long
| identured servitude on imigrants is not a bug but a feature
|
| I was on the hill when the initial congressional negotiations
| over immigration began in the mid-2010s.
|
| The stumbling block has always been illegal immigration. [0]
|
| The Dems congressional leadership at the time decided that no
| reform on legal immigration would happen without illegal
| immigration reform (eg. DREAM act)
|
| The GOP congressional leadership at the time decided that no
| reform on illegal immigration would happen without legal
| immigration.
|
| Neither side budged, and neither side really cared because
| immigrants (legal or illegal) can't vote.
|
| [0] - https://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/nancy-pelosi-
| immigrat...
| toyg wrote:
| _> neither side really cared because immigrants (legal or
| illegal) can 't vote._
|
| This really is the alpha and omega of migration policies
| all around the world: the people affected don't have a say,
| and the people not affected use the issues to play hateful
| games.
| labster wrote:
| Having done some student lobbying on H1B visas a few years
| back, I can tell you the fatal flaw in that plan is that it
| does nothing to secure the southern border. The same thing is
| true about sending military aid to Ukraine now -- how does
| that stop people from crossing our border?
|
| In the twisty little minds of Congressmen, we can't do
| anything good and obvious unless we solve their tangentially
| related problem first. All of that stuff you said about the
| system sounds like it matters but honestly those concerns
| never even appear in their minds.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you get a work visa for 3-5 years that 's tied to your
| employer_
|
| Time spent getting a degree at an accredited American
| university should count as the same.
| ta988 wrote:
| Disagree as it has no warranty you are good enough to keep a
| job, only that you could pay fees every year.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Sure. Nobody said you get citizenship. Just a work visa not
| tied to an employer.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Work visas and education visas are two different things
| that should be treated separately.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Work visas and education visas are two different
| things that should be treated separately_
|
| It makes zero sense to educate kids and then force them
| to grow those fruits abroad. If we're going to teach
| them, it makes sense to give them a chance to work here
| applying their new skills. This is such low-hanging win-
| win fruit.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| There is no difference. The goal is to avoid a Canadian
| Vancouver situation
| mkii wrote:
| The per-country limits are a good thing, the "bottleneck" is a
| feature not a bug
| fooker wrote:
| Are you familiar with the idea of Chesterton's fence?
|
| Why do you think we have such a convoluted immigration scheme?
|
| Can you think of ways to exploit the system you have suggested?
| dehrmann wrote:
| Thinking about unintended consequences is good, but you're
| assuming more intentionality to existing laws than is
| actually there. It's convoluted more for political reasons
| than for pragmatic ones.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| The bottle neck is on purpose.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I'm a little surprised to see a number of anti-immigraiton
| comments on this thread, some of which you could describe as
| reactionary.
|
| The US is and always has been a country of immigrants. Your idea
| of who is and isn't an immigrant is simply a question of what
| time window you choose. In 1800, the US had a population of ~2
| million. by 1900 it was ~50 million. You want to guess how itt
| got that way?
|
| Let's dispense of the common issues:
|
| 1. Tech layoffs. This is unrelated to immigration. This is de
| facto employer colusion to suppress wages. Notice how all the
| tech companies started doing layoffs at about the same time? The
| counterargument is "economic conditions". You may have a point
| with VC funding drying up due to rising interest rates but many
| of the biggest companies are massively profitable. Profits tend
| to fall so they want to suppress costs to maintain profits.
| That's it.
|
| I will say that layoffs should basically prohibit you from
| applying for more work visas for a period. For example: if you've
| laid off anyone in the last year, sorry you can't sponsor a work
| visa. You can escape this by, say, paying severance of at least a
| year's total compensation. The point is to remove the economic
| incentive of suppressing wages from the layoff-then-rehire cycle.
|
| 2. Lowering wages. Restricted immigration actually lowers wages.
| Why? Because it allows employs to pay undocumented workers less.
| Poultry farms are an excellent example of this. They pay
| undocuemnted workers less. If they ever start making noise about
| wages or conditions, you clear them out by calling in an ICE
| raid, pay a nominal fine, rinse and repeat.
|
| How do we know this? Because when states actually go after
| employers rather than the workers, it's an economic disaster [1].
|
| Also, we used to have a temporary worker program for seasonal and
| agricultural workers called the Bracero program. This filled an
| economic need. Eliminating it created more undocumented residents
| because crossing the border became too difficult and expensive.
|
| 3. A rising tide lifts all boats. There's mountains of evidence
| for this (eg [1]). Unions increase non-union wages. If we didn't
| have wage suppression by forced undocumented workers it would
| raise wages for everyone.
|
| Immigrants aren't "stealing your jobs" or "lowering your wages".
| There's a long history of trying to blame immigrants instead of
| (correctly) blaming the concerted effort by capital owners to
| lower your wages.
|
| [1]: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/alabamas-
| immigratio...
|
| [2]: https://www.workrisenetwork.org/working-knowledge/unions-
| rai...
| pvg wrote:
| _I 'm a little surprised to see a number of anti-immigraiton
| comments on this thread, some of which you could describe as
| reactionary._
|
| Threads change pretty fast and prefixing your comment with that
| kind of goady meta makes it strictly worse and less effective
| at advancing your arguments.
| r3d0c wrote:
| this site is mostly rich right wingers/"libertarian" tech bro
| types with very short term thinking and care more about
| striking it rich quick while destroying the very ladder that
| allowed them to climb up not understanding that in the long
| term it's bad for them too
|
| they live in a very small world and can't digest a model of the
| world with a wider contextual understanding of anything
| dudul wrote:
| > The US is and always has been a country of immigrants. Your
| idea of who is and isn't an immigrant is simply a question of
| what time window you choose. In 1800, the US had a population
| of ~2 million. by 1900 it was ~50 million. You want to guess
| how itt got that way?
|
| Just because we needed and encouraged immigration 200 years ago
| doesn't mean we have a duty to never adjust policies based on
| current needs and realities. What was necessary in 1900 may not
| be desirable anymore. Surprisingly that's a fact that people
| usually have no problem applying to the 2nd ammendment, but is
| a big no no when it comes to immigration.
|
| Edit to quote the specific part of the message I am reacting
| to.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Pretty much every advanced economy is seeing stagnant
| population growth. Integrating immigrants is one of our most
| important skills and we need to keep practicing it.
| dudul wrote:
| Did I make any comment about the current need for
| immigration? I was criticizing what I thought was a very
| weak argument.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Fair enough!
| blasphemers wrote:
| Or we could try and solve the issues that lead to stagnant
| population growth which mostly stem from lifestyle and
| financial choices.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The government has much more control over immigration
| policy than individuals' lifestyle and financial choices.
| Also it seems to be a pretty widespread problem, so I'm
| not sure which country we should steal ideas from.
| artylerzysta wrote:
| Look how integration of migrants looks like in western
| Europe. Worshipers of economic growth don't see all the
| social issues mass scale immigration brings.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Western Europe hasn't really integrated its migrants well
| like North America has.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Most towns in this country outside of coastal cities that do
| have significant immigration are hollowed out. Look at St.
| Louis or countless other cities satellite imagery, and tell
| me its somehow prudent to have every other parcel abandoned
| and razed as if it were bombed during a war for lack of any
| population growth for a half century.
| dudul wrote:
| Did I make any comment about the current need for
| immigration? I was criticizing what I thought was a very
| weak argument.
| yonaguska wrote:
| > 2. Lowering wages. Restricted immigration actually lowers
| wages. Why? Because it allows employs to pay undocumented
| workers less. Poultry farms are an excellent example of this.
| They pay undocuemnted workers less. If they ever start making
| noise about wages or conditions, you clear them out by calling
| in an ICE raid, pay a nominal fine, rinse and repeat.
|
| This only happens because there is no policing of companies
| exploiting undocumented workers. I've seen wages lowered time
| and time again in various industries due to the exploitation of
| undocumented workers. I've seen it in the restaurant industry,
| construction, trades, cleaning services, etc.
|
| https://chicago.eater.com/2017/11/29/16716666/mcdonalds-bake...
|
| I wish I could find the articles that came out about this at
| the time- but the bakery was reported by employees, mainly
| black employees that were losing their jobs to the illegals and
| experiencing pay cuts. The company complains about losing 21
| million- bc they had to start paying fair wages to get actual
| citizens to work. I understand your sentiment- that if there is
| no pay gap between undocumented workers and citizens- then the
| wages should go up- but in reality- you just doubled the labor
| pool, so wages will not go up. I also agree- we should be
| blaming the capital owners for this- but my opinion is that
| capital owners write the laws and that's why enforcement on
| undocumented labor is non-existent.
| bsdpufferfish wrote:
| > The US is and always has been a country of immigrants.
|
| This is a platitude not an argument about whether hiring tech
| workers from foreign countries is good for them or for US
| citizens.
|
| I also don't think the value you're expressing is historically
| supported.
|
| > Profits tend to fall so they want to suppress costs to
| maintain profits. That's it.
|
| We have internal emails from major tech companies showing that
| the CEOs are conscious about how these decisions affect the
| labor pool and their control of it (as well as competitors). So
| we already know there is a plurality of motivations going on in
| backroom discussions.
|
| Why the lack of curiosity?
|
| > Restricted immigration actually lowers wages. Why? Because it
| allows employs to pay undocumented workers less
|
| You just said it lowers illegal immigrants pay, not the
| citizens. Also this example is from the bottom of the labor
| market, not Electrical Engineers.
|
| > This filled an economic need.
|
| Yes, farm businesses would prefer to pay cheaper people without
| rights or benefits. That's the need it's filling.
|
| > Unions increase non-union wages.
|
| Being pro-union seems incompatible with the rest of your post.
| you think unionized companies would be with hiring some illegal
| immigrants on the side who aren't protected by the union?
| rayiner wrote:
| > The US is and always has been a country of immigrants
|
| Settlers founding new places are different from immigrants. The
| US was created by British settlers. Its language, laws,
| political system, and to a great extent its culture are
| British. If you look at various statistics, the Anglo countries
| share strong commonalities, even though people of British
| descent are now a distinct minority in the US (while being a
| majority in Britain, Canada, and Australia).
|
| Over time, other people moved in. Those were immigrants. But
| for a long time it wasn't immigration as we know it today. Many
| of them created greenfield communities, settling large swaths
| of the Midwest, etc. Those communities were pockets of Germans,
| etc., in a country that was still distinctly British.
|
| "Immigration" since the 20th century looks quite different
| again. Immigrants aren't founding new greenfield communities,
| they are moving into (and changing) existing ones. The place
| where I grew up is culturally unrecognizable now thanks to
| immigration (both of foreigners and of people from other parts
| of the country).
| pvg wrote:
| _Its language, laws, political system, and to a great extent
| its culture are British._
|
| This is ahistorical enough to have been inaccurate at the end
| of the 18th century when Canada and the US were barely in
| their larval stages. The perceived cultural and systemic
| distinctions were already invoked for propaganda purposes
| even then, curiously mirroring US/Canada tropes to this day:
|
| _By delivering abundant food with a paternalistic flair, the
| British sought to strengthen loyalty in Canada. Lord
| Grenville assured Dorchester that the aid would impress "the
| minds of His Majesty's Subjects under your Lordship's
| Government with a just sense of His Majesty's paternal regard
| for the welfare of all his People." In 1791 the Crown
| canceled that debt with a flourish meant to contrast British
| benevolence with the crass commercialism of the republic.
| Upon arriving in Canada, the king's son, Prince Edward,
| announced: "My father is not a merchant to deal in bread and
| ask payment for food granted for the relief of his loyal
| subjects." By contrast, in the republic, the bread merchants
| ruled and imprinted their names on their towns. In the Mohawk
| Valley, the people renamed one town as Paris, not after the
| French metropolis, but to honor Isaac Paris, a merchant and
| miller who had loaned them food in 1789. The British promoted
| a Canadian identity framed in contrast with the republic,
| understood as an amoral land of greedy competition where
| demagogues flattered the common folk but exploited the poor
| among them._
|
| From: _The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British
| Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies_, Alan Taylor
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I'm a little surprised to see a number of anti-immigraiton
| comments on this thread
|
| First time in an immigration discussion on HN? They always
| bring the "America for Americans (who look like me)" types out
| of the woodwork.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| FWIW I'm a foreign-born US citizen and I agree with them. I
| think immigration is important for highly in-demand fields
| that can't be fulfilled by US citizens or existing permanent
| residents within the next 5 years. Nurses and doctors for
| example. Tech is not one of those fields, so I would 100%
| support anti-immigration policies (including outsourcing
| restrictions) in that sector until there is a true need for
| it.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Nurses and Doctors make the same complaints Engineers do.
|
| And depending on the subfield, it simply cannot be filled
| in 2-3 years.
|
| There is just an institutional failure in supporting STEM
| at the undergraduate level in the US.
| sirpunch wrote:
| There are also a bunch of recent immigrants on threads like
| these who have the 'close the door after me' mindset. They
| also support hard restrictions on immigration, as soon as
| they get the green card or citizenship.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> The US is and always has been a country of immigrants
|
| The US has had periods where immigration was relatively
| unrestricted, and periods where it was heavily restricted.
|
| >> Restricted immigration actually lowers wages
|
| The US passed laws restricting immigration after World War I
| (Immigration Act of 1917, Immigration Act of 1924). These were
| in effect until 1965.
|
| Wage growth was slower to non-existent after restrictions on
| immigration were removed compared to the period when they were
| in effect. The evidence from US history does not support your
| assertion. You can deny the law of supply and demand, but you
| can not repeal it.
| danking00 wrote:
| Watching friends work through the decades long journey of
| citizenship, going to prestigious undergrad institutions, getting
| PhDs, publishing in journals, teaching part-time while working
| full time in industry, all just to get the right to stay in the
| country they've lived since they were 18 is fucking depressing.
|
| I doubt I'd qualify for EB-1 [1]. I'd have qualified for EB-2 at
| 28 when I attained five years of work experience [2][3]. If I
| didn't have a BS I'd need ten years experience. If I had spent
| the usual five years flailing about in a PhD instead of dropping
| out early, I'd have delayed "work experience" another three
| years.
|
| Now this hypothetical version of myself waits as short as two
| years (China-born) and as long as eleven years (India-born) to
| get an application considered. Meanwhile, they're trying to
| maintain work authorization, either via the time-limited OPT or
| hopefully winning an H1-B which has its own highly competitive
| lottery. And when they finally get PR/citizenship, their (now
| quite old) parents have no hope of receiving PR/citizenship so
| they'll probably be flying across oceans to care for them as they
| age.
|
| All of this for the mistake of being born in the wrong part of
| the word.
|
| Meanwhile, I'm some fuckup who happened to be born in the US who
| has never known struggle. It just all seems cosmically unfair.
|
| [1] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-
| states/permanent... [2] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-
| united-states/permanent... [3] aswell23 is correct that I would
| qualify for EB-2 based on my BS degree. I had misread the EB-2
| requirements. The text originally read: "I'm still two years shy
| of the 10 year minimum years of experience for EB-2 [2]. So that
| leaves EB-3."
|
| EDIT: clarify second paragraph with third-person pronouns.
|
| EDIT2: clarify based on apwell23's comment
|
| EDIT3: further clarification based on apwell23's second comment.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > At 33 years old I'm still two years shy of the 10 year
| minimum for EB-2 [2]
|
| not sure what your link has to do with age requirement that you
| mention. eb2 has no age minimum.
|
| You also wrote bunch of other falsehoods like visa renewals
| requiring lottery, renewals don't count against yearly visa
| quota. Most of the stuff in your comment is not correct.
| danking00 wrote:
| I'd be delighted to be proven wrong but the ten year minimum
| experience comes from the second reference:
|
| > Letters from current or former employers documenting at
| least 10 years of full-time experience in your occupation
|
| EDIT: I see where you misunderstood. I emphasized the age to
| show how long someone would be waiting for a non-precarious
| situation. I'll edit above.
|
| Apologies if I'm unclear, I mean getting the H1-B in the
| first place requires a lottery. People who graduate with US
| undergrad degrees can start on OPT or the like but must
| transition to something else when that's exhausted. One
| friend just went through exactly this where she exhausted her
| OPT, lost work authorization, but missed three attempts at
| H1-B.
|
| What else is wrong?
| apwell23 wrote:
| > Letters from current or former employers documenting at
| least 10 years of full-time experience in your occupation
|
| Thats if you are in the second row in the table above. i.e
| "Exceptional Ability".
|
| You don't need it if you have masters or bachelors + 5.
|
| > Meanwhile, they're trying to maintain work authorization
|
| There is no 'meanwhile' , they are not in eb green card
| queues without going though the h1 lottery first. In no
| case are you going though h1b lottery and in green card
| queue concurrently.
| danking00 wrote:
| Fair on the first point, I'll adjust the text to clarify
| the need for a BS.
|
| On the second point, first claim, you can be in an EB-1
| queue without an H1-B (e.g. OPT or TN [1]). On the second
| claim, I admit to not knowing someone who is _in the
| queue_ and in the lottery but they're on TN, preparing
| materials for an EB-1 and applying for an H1-B. My
| understanding was that they'd apply for both concurrently
| (due to the EB queue period), but I have no references to
| back me up.
|
| [1] If you were born in China and then immigrated to
| Canada, you're still in the China queue for EB.
| apwell23 wrote:
| Yes correct, Greencard is not tied to maintaining current
| employment or having a visa, its a separate process. I
| know ppl who came to USA for the first time on a
| greencard. I was addressing the word "meanwhile" in your
| comment, i guess it technically possible that someone
| gets their greencard applied while they are on OPT/vistor
| visa/some other visa ect and then go through the h1b
| lottery.
|
| just saw this.
|
| > What else is wrong?
|
| > And when they finally get PR/citizenship, their (now
| quite old) parents have no hope of receiving
| PR/citizenship
|
| Family based greencards have current wait time of
| ~11months start to finish.
| danking00 wrote:
| Thanks for all your comments thus far! I have an axe to
| grind with the US immigration system but it's best to
| grind it on a stone of facts.
|
| Yeah, I was a bit loose with the parents situation. I
| made a general comment based on a specific circumstances.
| That's my bad.
|
| To petition for parents you need to be a full citizen not
| simply a green card holder. That adds five years. For
| India-born folks, this practically puts their parents
| date over a decade away. Meanwhile those parents become
| elderly and live thousands of miles from their grand
| children. So, for a lot of folks who spent years pursuing
| PhDs and have Indian passports their parents might
| immigrate at ~seventy while they're in their fifties. I
| dunno man, that's fairly old. Their parents might not
| make it.
|
| I can't edit the original post anymore, so your comment
| will have to serve as the correction.
| neofrommatrix wrote:
| I went through the EB-1 process and finally got my GC. I
| applied in my 6th year of working in industry. The work
| done towards your PhD counts as work experience, if I
| remember correctly. A couple of people I know applied in
| their second year in the industry.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Now this hypothetical version of myself waits as short as two
| years (China-born) and as long as eleven years (India-born)
|
| China and India are the outliers. For most people, pre-pandemic
| (and post financial meltdown), the wait was under 2 years -
| almost everyone I know got it in under 2 years (EB-2, MS or
| higher degree).
|
| If you weren't born in China/India, and had an "advanced
| degree" in a STEM field (i.e. MS or higher), the green card
| process was/is fairly smooth. The real bottleneck is the H1-B
| visa quota/lottery.
| danking00 wrote:
| I suppose majority is factually true, but I think it's worth
| being specific that nearly three billion people are in that
| situation.
| coredog64 wrote:
| How many of those 3B would qualify for an H-1B absent any
| caps? How many more STEM professionals could the US absorb
| at something close to current salaries?
| danking00 wrote:
| For India alone, Wikipedia says ~8% or ~100 million have
| a BS. I was more focused on PR/citizenship in my post. I
| do not know what qualifies you for an H1-B.
|
| In the second point, I only have an imprecise opinion
| which is that I'd rather suffer some loss of quality of
| life personally if the median human experience is raised.
|
| Would you support kicking out someone who doesn't qualify
| for an EB or H1-B (in practice, you're kicking out non
| degree holders) for a foreign born person who does
| qualify? If not, it seems to me we are embracing a
| lottery of birth place. To be clear, I'd like to see
| substantially more freedom of movement even if it means
| reducing my quality of life.
| logicchains wrote:
| >China and India are the outliers
|
| They're not outliers in the sense that a significant percent
| of the world's population come from those two countries, so
| disadvantaging them disadvantages a significant fraction of
| the world's population.
| geodel wrote:
| As long there are countries boundaries there will be
| disadvantage. I don't think we are implementing that total
| amount of earth's resources be divided equally among total
| number of earth's inhabitants.
| geodel wrote:
| > It just all seems cosmically unfair.
|
| Huh, it is unfair in the same sense that football, basketball
| or movie stars are living in mega mansions or penthouses and
| flying in private jets while millions in US struggle for basic
| needs in US.
|
| Most H1B coming from India are among top 1-2% of India's vast
| population and thats pretty fucking huge luck. Going through
| normal wait of immigration process, which no one forced them to
| undertake btw, is a kind of elitist thinking where any delay in
| fulfilling upper class want is an untold atrocity inflicted
| upon them.
| jjkeddo199 wrote:
| If you want to complain about pro athletes making too much
| compare to STEM, consider that the average aspiring pro ends
| up making less than minimum wage over the duration of their
| career.
|
| Only a tiny handful of about 250k high school football-
| playing seniors are able to find any at all job in their
| sport (if they even make it to college). Meanwhile, the
| roughly 100k yearly US CS grads have an unemployment rate of
| maybe 10%.
| aiisahik wrote:
| I'm an Australian citizen who has lived in the US for over 20
| years, gotten degrees from Yale and Berkeley. I've worked as a
| software engineer for over 10 years and am currently a cofounder.
|
| I'm so put off by the immigration process in the US that I have
| decided to leave the US permanently. Don't worry - i still work
| for the same US based company remotely from a more cost effective
| nation. I just don't pay your taxes anymore.
| psychlops wrote:
| You should try the Australian immigration process.
| aiisahik wrote:
| Australian immigration process is a breeze! I'm am Immigrant
| to Australia too.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Unless things changed recently, Australian immigration is
| much easier for a person of his profile.
| psychlops wrote:
| Fair, that fit his profile.
| rayiner wrote:
| That seems like a win-win. Hopefully remote work will reduce
| the need for immigration.
| aiisahik wrote:
| I hire a ton of engineers in LATAM who have no interest in
| migrating to US. They get paid well in USD, they live in
| kings and queens in their respective low cost countries. In
| fact, looking at their live inspired me to make the decision
| to leave.
| rayiner wrote:
| It sounds like a good deal for them. Plus, they don't have
| to leave their families and social networks behind.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's a great deal for them. It's not the best deal for
| us, though, since they're not part of our tax base, nor
| are they growing families and social networks here for us
| to benefit from. It's a great outcome morally (Latam,
| African, and Asian countries deserve greater
| participation in global industries), but the one thing it
| doesn't do is optimize for the interests of America.
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _the one thing it doesn 't do is optimize for the
| interests of America._
|
| Short-term: Perhaps.
|
| Long-term: A more-stable LATAM (and world) economy is in
| America's interest.
| pavlov wrote:
| How is it a win for the United States if American companies
| are employing less people in the country, and instead are
| paying remote workers who pay taxes elsewhere?
| aiisahik wrote:
| It's not. It's just a WIN WIN for the company and the
| individual.
|
| But this is what the US is encouraging with its immigration
| policy so you reap what you sow.
| geodel wrote:
| Another thing could be that you come collecting US
| degrees is a WIN for US. Maybe degrees in Australia or
| your birth country weren't good enough for you (or you
| weren't good enough for them). Either way that US was
| able to have you for education and jobs for many years
| after that is win in my book.
| Dopameaner wrote:
| I dont completely agree with you. Honestly, appears like
| an excuse to never change the USCIS, I have come peace
| with it, that it never will.
| geodel wrote:
| By all means they should change but I hope not to the
| interest of very vocal tech minority, who are already
| elite in their own counties, and to the detriment of
| other deserving groups.
| aiisahik wrote:
| Imagine the US parents paying $$ to get their kids into
| an elite kindergarten in the hopes of some day sending
| their kid to an Ivy League.... Only to have their spot
| taken by some shmuck from Australia who has never
| previously set foot in the US get a free ride for a $200k
| education.... you're going to convince them that its a
| WIN for America!
| geodel wrote:
| So it is either that US company got better work done at
| cheaper price. Means win for US as it got a tiny bit
| competitive. That'd be pro-market argument.
|
| Or another way that if US company has decided to not employ
| US born local at least those got employed overseas will not
| compete for housing, schools and other services for which
| they easily out compete locals if they are employed in US.
| Means another win. That would be pro-nativist argument. I
| know they are not much loved here but that's that.
| rayiner wrote:
| The US doesn't understand the social burden of integrating
| an immigrant, and the resulting social conflict. Meanwhile,
| the prospective immigrant gets to stay in their homeland
| (most don't really want to leave, money aside).
|
| If tax dollars are the issue, just tax the company.
| aiisahik wrote:
| What kinda immigrant are you talking about? The immigrant
| they are housing in NYC hotels who arrived with 3 kids
| from Venezuela?
|
| Or the software engineer with a US college degree paying
| $>50k / year in income taxes to state and federal
| government?
|
| Because you know that they are only restricting the
| latter type of immigrant.
| rayiner wrote:
| I think the immigrant with three kids from Venezuela is
| probably easier to integrate in a way than a skilled
| immigrant who was typically an elite back home. I think
| the latter folks are more likely to bring their culture
| with them and try to change America.
| aiisahik wrote:
| You're right actually. Have you seen how many Australian
| coffee shops there are in New York? Crikey! Changing
| America one cup of flat white at a time. Tough work.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Software engineers are notoriously apolitical, even if
| that has been changing gradually. Plenty of technical
| "elites" remain separate, aloof from social life. Are
| foreign born doctors trying to "change America?"
| geodel wrote:
| > paying $>50k / year in income taxes to state and
| federal government?
|
| Because anyone else employed for that role/ income
| would've not paid income tax or any other tax at all. Its
| to immigrants credit that they pay taxes when they could
| simply chose not to.
| tptacek wrote:
| There is no meaningful social conflict arising from
| importation of skilled labor. Gainfully employed
| immigrants building families in the US are an asset, not
| a burden.
| Always_Anon wrote:
| You're getting down voted for this heterodox opinion.
| Flooding the West with foreigners is orthodoxy to the left.
| Any other opinion is heresy.
| aiisahik wrote:
| I think it's more nuanced than this. The left believes in
| immigration based on the amount of hardship / suffering
| endured by the immigrant. The more the suffering, the more
| deserving they are of being let in.
|
| The right believes in either no immigration or immigration
| based on an impossibly high bar with caps preventing
| immigration from undesirable origins.
|
| My view is that in the long run immigration policy simply
| does not matter because we will have figured out how to
| educate, recruit, train, and exploit the high quality
| remote labor from any country. The most talented folks
| around the world will find a way to reap the rewards of the
| American economy either by residing within the US or doing
| it from afar. The after tax wage spread is margin that can
| be exploited.
| BeetleB wrote:
| For those confused: Unfortunately, the US focuses on your
| origin (where you were born) rather than your nationality.
| alisahik is an Australian citizen, but was not born there. My
| guess is he was born in India, which has an absurdly long queue
| in the US immigration process.
|
| Really sucks.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Or China.
|
| But yea. That is what probably happened.
| BeetleB wrote:
| China's wait times are nowhere near as long as the OPs.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Wow. I didn't realize China's backlog fell to 2 years.
|
| Then again, I guess it makes sense. Both the US and China
| have made it much harder to leave China and enter the US
| now.
|
| That is not great if we are in a talent Cold War with a
| near peer.
| mkii wrote:
| > Both the US and China have made it much harder to leave
| China and enter the US now.
|
| Which policies do you think create this?
|
| It could be entirely probable the Chinese just don't find
| it attractive to live and work in the US after getting
| their college degrees here.
| alephnerd wrote:
| On the US side, we're still enforcing EO 10043 [0] which
| prevents Chinese nationals who studied at any Chinese
| university part of the Chinese Civil-Military Fusion
| strategy from getting F- and J- visas, and requires
| enhanced background checks on other visa categories.
|
| Turns out, just about every Chinese STEM program will get
| a military grant, the same way just about every American
| STEM program will get a DoD grant.
|
| On the Chinese side, they put a cap of $50,000 on money
| or assets you can bring outside of China each year [1].
| Tuition is included in that cap. That means most American
| universities are out of reach for Chinese students, and
| immigrating from China to the US with your entire family
| is a pain (you need some money to land on your feet).
|
| Also, during 2019-2022 there was this small policy called
| Zero COVID that severely restricted ingress and egress.
|
| Also, US Consulates and Embassies paused visa processing
| for almost 2 years during the pandemic.
|
| [0] - https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/06/0
| 4/2020-12...
|
| [1] - https://www.safe.gov.cn/en/2017/1230/1391.html
| fallingknife wrote:
| What an idiotic system! Any sane policy would just put a max
| number of annual visas or total active visa holders and
| choose the best value applicants based on a scoring system,
| but no we can't have nice things.
| mkii wrote:
| You describe the current system, just that country of
| origin is a factor in the "scoring system."
| dudul wrote:
| Ensuring diversity of immigration sounds like an important
| criteria to keep in mind.
| aiisahik wrote:
| Really?
|
| 1. Is that why they give special virtually uncapped visa
| classes to Australia, Singapore, Canada and Chile while
| everyone else has to deal with h1B?
|
| 2. Do you think there are country based limits when
| admitting people through the southern border or granting
| refugee status?
| dudul wrote:
| I have no idea what these have to do with the matter
| being discussed here. We're talking about legal
| immigration and cap applied to visa/green card.
|
| What is "virtually uncapped"? Do you have a source
| explaining how Australia, Singapore, Canada and Chile are
| treated differently? And as an FYI, I see no problem with
| Canada having a special regime.
| aiisahik wrote:
| https://www.jackson-hertogs.com/us-immigration/temporary-
| wor...
|
| BTW Mexico gets the same special regime as Canada under
| NAFTA.
| dudul wrote:
| Thanks for the link. After reading a bit about H1B1 it
| looks like 1. It is included in the H1B cap, ergo it is
| de facto capped 2. It is actually capped as a portion of
| the available H1B.
|
| No clue what parent meant by virtually uncapped.
| aiisahik wrote:
| "Provides 1,400 visas annually for Chileans and 5,400
| visas annually for Singaporeans, counted separately from
| the H-1B visa cap"
| dudul wrote:
| "Of the 65,000 visas allocated to the capped H-1B visa
| program, the amount of 6,800 are reserved for use for the
| H-1B1: 1,400 for Chile and 5,400 for Singapore."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B1_visa
|
| Counted separately but included in the overall cap.
|
| Another interesting difference is that H1B1 seems to not
| be dual intent, contrary to H1B. Definitely not the
| panacea that was hinted at in this thread.
| aiisahik wrote:
| Australians, Chileans and Singaporeans are eligible for a
| class of work visa that basically has no cap (or cap has
| never been reached). They don't have the complete with
| the unwashed masses who have to deal with H1B.
| linhvn wrote:
| They get a special, non immigrant work visa. If they want
| to apply for green card they subsequently need to apply
| for H-1B.
| mkii wrote:
| That's a feature, not a bug. Otherwise you could find X
| country that is loose with citizenship requirements and get
| around the US' per-country limit.
| aiisahik wrote:
| Only a feature if you believe in the per country limit. The
| alternative is to just score everyone based on point based
| system and admit the highest scorers regardless of national
| origin.
| mkii wrote:
| > point based system
|
| Today if you're an illegal migrant and claim asylum, you
| get +inf points. If you're born in certain countries with
| long wait time, you get -inf points.
|
| Clearly the system today is working within your
| definition.
| filoleg wrote:
| > If you're born in certain countries with long wait
| time, you get -inf points.
|
| Re-read the parent comment again. They say "point-based
| system [...] regardless of national origin", which
| implies that the origin country wouldn't have any effect
| aka point-value (neither negative nor positive) attached
| to it.
|
| > if you're an illegal migrant and claim asylum, you get
| +inf points
|
| Bringing up the asylum visa category makes zero sense,
| because it was obvious from the context (both the parent
| comment and the entire thread) that the conversation was
| about a point system in the context of employment-based
| visas. Having a point-based system go cross-category or
| even used at all in most categories doesn't make sense.
|
| So no, the system you described isn't working with their
| definition at all.
| driverdan wrote:
| Good. There should be no limit.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| with the massive layoffs of American software folks the last year
| its a bad time to boost foreign STEM visas. yikes
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| This is a good start, but without solving the elephant in the
| room (illegal immigration), there will never be the political
| capital to really make these programs efficient and effective.
| matrix87 wrote:
| This isn't bad timing really, we just had a year of layoffs and
| have a federal election just around the corner. The people who
| are interested should read up on Trump's previous immigration
| policy, which looks to be considerably more favorable to domestic
| citizens
|
| https://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/trump-h1b-changes-miss-...
| grungydan wrote:
| It blows my mind that people still want to move here, not leave.
| I get it if you're leaving war behind or something, but if you
| live in any other Western democracy, you're probably better off
| staying there. The US is more openly and actively hostile to its
| populace with every passing day. Not white, male, land owning,
| cisgendered, straight, and at least pretend to be some flavor of
| judeo-christian? Fuck you today and fuck you harder tomorrow. Oh,
| you are those things? Wait...you also need to be rich, sorry
| about that. Oh, and have a complimentary fuck you.
| JB_Dev wrote:
| It's pretty simple - software engineering compensation can be
| 2x-4x or more in the US compared to other western democracies.
| Money circumvents a lot of the problems you describe.
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